Wittgenstein and Modern Philosophy: A Review

JUSTUS HARTNACK, Wittgenstein and Modern doctrine (trans Maurice Cranston, New York Anchor Books, 1965) pp. (x+142). Paper. The disk Wittgenstein and Modern Philosophy, written by professor Justus hartnack, was low print in Danish. Later this discussion was translated to English by Maurice Cranston who was the reference of Freedom, What are Human Rights? , Jean-Paul Sartre and the standard biography of John Locke. Hartnack is in addition famous for his moderate Philosophical Problems. The contain Wittgenstein and Modern Philosophy deals with the doctrine of the most famous contemporary philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.This book covers over integrity coulomb and forty two pages. It begins with a preface by the reason. This book, having five chapters, is the reading material of Wittgensteins philosophical whole shebang. The first chapter, under the title Biographical design, dealt with the life floor of Ludwig Wittgensteinthe most renowned figure of the time. He was a great philosopher who dedicated himself to the growth of philosophical system. philosophy was his life (p. 3). Though he made lectures on British universities, he was not at wholly English, yet an Austrian Jew, living and working in England.He was born in Vienna in 1889, the son of a rich engineer. Initi in on the wholey he had a taste to engineering but ulterior, it transformed to mathematics and he became a disciple of Bertrand Russell in Cambridge University. At the asidebreak of the First ball War, he contributed a few years in the Austrian army. His first and the most famous book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was published in 1922. Indeed the language of the book is elusive, it has had an enormous influence among philosophers (p. 6). Its influence was particularly marked in the ratiocinative ordered positivism that became so fashionable in the years between the wars.But the later teachings of Wittgenstein were contrasting to the former teachings. His The Philosophic al Investigations (1953), which published nevertheless after his conclusion marked a vernal beginning in the world of philosophy. any(prenominal)how the above books, he was also the author of the book, The Blue and Brown Books (1958). His literary productions paved a place for Wittgenstein in the history of philosophy. The second chapter named The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus gives out a brief summary of Wittgensteins eighty pages bookTractatus Logico-Philosophicus.The author begins with the traditional notion of languageconsists of words and each word possesses meat insofar as it stands for something (p. 13). It is the search for the problem of philosophical assertions that brings out the effective errors in using the language. So, Russell in his Principia Mathematica comes up with the need of constructing a sore language preserving the coherent form. It was the beginning of symbolic logic. But Wittgenstein was not contented with this new language beca expenditure he d id not think on that point was any need to construct a new language beca mathematical function he held that in that location is only one language (p. 6). His book Tractatus component parts this idea. The author expresses the content of Wittgensteins Tractatus in nine parts in this chapter. The world, vista and proposals nave the same ordered formworld is invented by thought and it is expressed in words as advises. So, according to Wittgenstein, the world is the totality of situations, not of things (p. 18). A thing is not itself a fact even the thing is take shape up with the notion of a fact. The author uses the example It is a fact that my watch is lying on the add-in, but neither the watch nor the table is a fact (p. 25).The thought and propositions serve as pictures of facts. This is cognize as Picture Theory of Languagelanguage is a picture or model of facts. Pictures are models of reality and these are made up of elements that represent objects. The combination of objects in the picture represents the combination of objects in reality. So the number of the language is to represent the state of affairs in the world. But the proposition does not give a spatial representation of the fact it is only a logical picture of the state of affairs. Then, Hartnack points out Wittgensteins model of confidential.There are some facts that would be nonsensical to discuss, describe or even to think, because language cannot logically be employed nearly it (p. 40). He included all the ethical and spiritual values in the nation of incomprehensible. It is something that is transcendental. The third chapter The Tractatus and Logical Positivism says about the influence of Tractatus over logical positivism. The author divided this chapter into four parts. The first part comments on logical positivists conception of philosophy. For them, the task of philosophy is simply to explicate the meaning of such philosophical problems and propositions (p. 6). It has n ix to do in providing information about reality. A better understanding of the meaning of propositions can be determine through verification principleone understands the meaning of a proposition only of one knows how it could be verified. For example, the statement It is raining can be verified. But there are some other propositions that cant be verified and it is called as pseudo propositions similar to Wittgensteins cabalistic. In the following parts of the third chapter, the author discusses how the logical positivism differs from the ideas of Wittgenstein.It is believed by the positivist that Wittgenstein was the first one who had proposed the verification principle. Wittgenstein accepted the mystical propositions as good along with the empirical propositions. But positivists denied the assumption that mystical propositions are genuine for they cannot accept anything other than that is empirical. what cannot be said, and therefore cannot be thought, is not an expression of th e limits of language. The reason for being silent is that there is nothing to speak about (p. 55). The fourth chapter holds the same title, The Philosophical Investigations, of his second known book.This chapter speaks on the summary of Wittgensteins Investigations. This book is not a law of continuation of his own Tractatus rather it is the repudiation of his views in Tractatus. The author explains its importance as What gives the importance is that it contains the mature philosophy of Wittgenstein. It introduces a new chapter in the history of philosophy. It is not just a continuation or development of the thought of others. It is something wholly kickoffal (p. 62-63). The Investigations had a reference to St. Augustines Confessions. St.Augustine fancied, according to Wittgenstein, that he had discovered what was essential to all languages, namely that all words should come a meaning and that the meaning of each was what it stood for (p. 65). Augustine conceived of it as a nami ng-game, that is, as a language mastered by learning the names of incompatible things. But Wittgenstein couldnt approve this naming-game and with a slight difference he introduced language-game which had its foundation on the sense that the meaning of a word is its use in the language. He thought that in language we are playacting with words.As we cant find any resemblance in diametrical games though they possess some similarities and relationships, we cant find resemblance in our multiple ways of language use. Hartnack discusses Language, no longer a picture of reality, is now seen as a toolwith variety of uses. antithetic words are like different tools in the toolbox. And just as there is no one use which is the essential use of all tools, there is no one essential use for words and sentences. (p. 75) various language-games show a family resemblance as like the members of a family share many similar features, such as eye colour, hair, facial structure, etc,.However, there g o forth be no one particular feature that they all share in common. So the different language-games are related to one another in many different ways. In Investigations, Wittgenstein made a gradual transition on the aim of philosophy. With a new view, philosophy aims at complete clarity. And this complete clarity does not lead to the root of problem, but to its disappearance (p. 82). Why is to say that the problem disappear? It is because the origin of the philosophical perplexity is an error, or rather a misunderstandinga misunderstanding of the logical grammar of the sentences concerned.When it has been healed, the source of the problem has not been solved, it has vanished. The business office of philosophy is to show the path of liberation to the fly trapped in the fly bottle. In the last chapter Contemporary Philosophical Investigations, Hartnack says something about the philosophers who were actually much influenced by Wittgenstein. He also tried to give a brief note on the p apers and books published by those philosophers. gigabit Ryles The Concept of Mind is the first book to be dealt with.It was published in 1949, four years before the Investigations, and it is not Wittgenstein in style, although there is no conflict on essential points but it is typically Wittgensteinian in that it treats philosophical problems as the consequence of the misunderstanding of the logic of concepts (p. 119). as well big(p) a short description, the author has not tried to go deep into the text. Following Ryles The Concept of Mind, Hartnack makes a brief get word on Peter Strawsons paper On Referring, where Strawson is attacking what he believes to be a mistaken conception of meaning. Strawsons paper is Wittgensteinian in the sense that it argues that the meaning of a sentence is not what it refers to, but the rules for its correct use (p. 121). He rejected Russells claim that every(prenominal) sentence must be true or false or meaningless. For Strawson, a sentence is meaningful if there are rules for its use as an assertion (p. 126). In the following two parts of the last chapter, author summarises The Ascription of Responsibility and Rights, the defense paper of Professor H. L. A. Hart and On Grading, the paper presented by the Oxford philosopher J.O. Urmson. The former is dealt with morality and jurisprudence. Here Hart made some similarities of the problems in philosophy and legal concepts. The latter studies the use of sentences that function as evaluations. Urmson works from the simple and homely example of leveling apples. An apple can be graded either as ripe(p) or as bad, based on its empirical properties. But the logical structure of the sentence This is good is quite distinct from any head about the validity or relevance of any criterion that may be invoked in support of it (p. 42). The validity of the statement is not proved in this kind of evaluations. The book Wittgenstein and Modern Philosophy is really an excellent interpret ation of Ludwig Wittgensteins philosophical worksTractatus and Investigations. Hartnack had made a genuine effort to make this book marvelous. Though this book contributes nothing new to the world of philosophy, it shows a great honour to Wittgenstein. Hartnack was successful in giving appropriate footnotes in places where the reader needs clarifications.But it is sorry to say that this book lacks index and the last chapter of this book is so vague. The author would have to redress a little more attention to these drawbacks. Excluding these drawbacks, this book is an awesome work. This book will be very useful to the philosophy students especially those who are making study exclusively on Wittgenstein. Even the translator re-produced the book in a simple and eloquent language. This book review will be incomplete unless I mention that the author showed justice to the works of Wittgenstein and even to the readers.